The Self-Driven Child
Helping parents raise kids with healthy motivation and resilience in facing life's challenges. Oh, and having more fun while doing it!
The Self-Driven Child
Adolescents Are Identity Scientists: Exploring With Chris Balme
In this episode, I sit down with education leader, parent, and author Chris Balme for a deep, thoughtful, and often funny conversation about what adolescents are really doing during the middle school and teen years. We explore why this stage of life is less about “figuring kids out” and more about understanding the intense social, emotional, and neurological work they’re already doing every day. Chris offers a powerful frame that I love: adolescents as identity scientists, running experiments to answer one core question—who am I, and where do I belong?
We talk about how adults can make that work easier instead of harder, why third spaces and unhurried time matter so much, and how validation, sleep, peers, and belonging shape everything during these years. If you live with, teach, or care about adolescents—or if you’re willing to remember your own—this conversation will resonate.
Episode Highlights:
[0:00] – Why it’s so hard to change how we parent, even when we know better
[1:40] – Why adolescence is the right time to reinvent yourself
[3:10] – Chris introduces the idea of kids as “identity scientists”
[5:15] – Identity is built through social experiments—and adults can help or hinder
[7:45] – The importance of different social spaces where kids can reinvent themselves
[9:35] – Why “third spaces” and non-parent adults matter so much
[13:30] – The critical role of unhurried time and reflection
[15:35] – Sleep deprivation and what it explains about teen behavior
[18:25] – Social approval, belonging uncertainty, and the adolescent brain
[21:15] – Why validation beats fixing, lecturing, or minimizing
[24:30] – Middle school memories, awkward experiments, and empathy
[28:50] – Belonging comes first—before achievement and authenticity
[31:15] – What we gain, as parents, by walking this journey with our kids
Links & Resources:
Allo Parents:
Ned's podcast Interview with Michaeleen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hunt-gather-parent-with-michaeleen-doucleff/id1676859533?i=1000643496031
About Michaeleen: https://www.npr.org/people/348778932/michaeleen-doucleff
Adolescents Are Identity Scientists: https://chrisbalme.substack.com/p/adolescents-are-identity-scientists
About Chris: https://www.chrisbalme.com/
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If you have a high school aged student and would like to talk about putting a tutoring or college plan together, reach out to Ned's company, PrepMatters at www.prepmatters.com
Hey, folks, Ned here, like me, you want your kids, your students, honestly, all the young people you know to thrive, and you know how much you can help. But like me, you probably also recognize that you fall short more than you like to, in part, because we tend to revert to old ways. We hear a great suggestion or learn a new approach, but to easily fall back into the same darn things that didn't work before, it isn't easy, which is why I'm really excited to share with you that Bill and I have a new book out this spring, the seven principles for raising a self driven child, a workbook. Our goal is to make it easier to put into practice more of the advice from our first two books, the self driven child and what do you say? Full of reflections and exercises to do yourself with your partner and with your children. We want to help make the self driven child way, your way, so you can, more often than not, be as effective as you want to be with your kids in ways that we know you want to be if you get a chance order a copy bill, and I and your kids would be grateful.
Chris Balme:It's why in schools, I'm such a big proponent of advisory spaces when they can be genuine, like student peer led spaces. When it goes well, you can have that validation. You can say, you know, here's what's happening in my life, and the adult doesn't have to jump in and now instruct you on social and emotional intelligence. Step number one, you know it's it's experiential social and emotional learning when there are peers with you and it's safe enough to speak honestly and respond honestly, that's something I think should be a fundamental ingredient in any middle or high school in my dream world.
Ned Johnson:Welcome to the self driven child podcast. I'm your host, Ned Johnson and co author with Dr William stixord of the books the self driven child the science and sense of giving your kids more control over their lives. And what do you say? How to talk with kids to build motivation, stress, tolerance and a happy home. It's a time of year when many people are trying to reinvent themselves, to figure out what directions do they want to go in, who they want to be, what do they want to change about themselves. And for no group of people is that more often and more appropriately the case than for adolescents who are trying on new ways of being, New Directions, New identities. If you're living with one of these people, you may be interested in this conversation today with someone who's had a front row view of this for an awfully long time. Education leader, parent, author, Chris Bong, Well, Chris, welcome back to the show. It's great to be back. A couple things love to talk about. You had a really neat piece in your sub stack, and I'll include a link to that in the show notes about students, middle school students, especially as social scientists. I thought it was such a clever framing of from my perspective, probably and certainly your yours arguably the most important work that kids are doing at that time of life. How did you come up with that term, and what does that what does that mean?
Chris Balme:I was trying to remember where it first popped into my head, and I think it might have been when I was working with some folks at NASA, believe it or not, they have a parenting group and invited me to come and talk. It was so fun. I was feeling in a very sight, you were over the moon. Yes, yes. Was literally over the moon. And all of these metaphors that involve science were somehow more available in that context. And I guess you know, the big picture is, you know, as we've talked about in past conversations, that there are, there are two peak times of brain growth in life, so zero to five and 11 to 16, early childhood, early adolescence. That's where it's at. Those are also the hardest times to be someone's parents, because of how quickly things are evolving. And when you zoom into the 11 to 16 years, you could sum up a lot of that brain growth by saying it's the remodeling of the brain into a social brain, a brain that can pick up all the things you and I pick up normally, and is, in a way, kind of flooded with that information, all of the you know, status and rankings and groups and popularity, all of that information that was already there but not noticed is now there. So what adolescents get to do, and I'm being a little facetious, because it's not easy, is try to figure out who they are, now that they recognize every single thing they do, the clothes they wear, the music they listen to, the club they join, is being ranked, sort of judged by everyone else around them, so it kind of throws them into this role of Identity scientists. And then we get to decide, as the, you know, helpful, enthusiastic adults that want to help them on this journey. How do we make that job easier, if possible? So we don't get to fill in any of the blanks for them. Unfortunately, it'd be so easy, but we can make the conditions easier or harder to be good. Identity scientists,
Ned Johnson:yeah, there's a reason why it's, it's Choose Your Own Adventure, not choose your kids adventure Exactly, exactly. Yeah, let's, let's talk about those, those conditions, a little bit of supporting people being in a social scientist, yeah.
Chris Balme:So, I mean, the general idea is that, you know, identity is developed through a series of social experiments. We can't go just kind of hole up somewhere as teenagers figure it all out and then emerge fully formed into the world. Sadly, we're going to go through a series of experiments, some of which will be excruciatingly awkward and some of which will be lovely. We'll find some puzzle piece that now is part of us forever. And so I think a lot of that piece that you saw was about, how do we as the adults, make it easier for them to run a good lab, if you will, just to play with that metaphor a bit. So, you know, a not so good lab would be one where we're constantly intervening. We're tilting things. We are, you know, to be more specific, say we're, we're actively shaming certain experiments, or trying to kind of ensure that an experiment works out the way we want. So, you know, the day that they drop the mention that maybe they want to join, you know, the swimming team, and that's what we've been hoping they would say, we try to nail that on so that they are going to be, you know, great swimmers, or whatever it is, chess club, and that doesn't serve them what? What that will do is cause their experiments to go underground where they they won't tell us about them. We have made their conditions a little harder because they don't get a chance to process it with us. So I think one of the findings from you know, that pointed to in that article is just the the value of having a warm neutrality in how we respond to their experiments. You know, today, they're the goth kid. Tomorrow, they're wearing different kinds of clothing, you know, if they're not harming anyone, to try not to tease, not to point out, you know, joke about how different they were from yesterday, nor to try to kind of fix that onto them forever, let them just keep running experiments. Another piece, I think, is that they need different social spaces. So a challenging thing for a lot of adolescents is, if they're in one peer community, they have a reputation, of course, like anyone would, and that story follows them and often kind of constrains them, where, if they try stepping out of that, someone is going to quickly make a joke, even if it's well intentioned, that will feel like this is a high price to pay to try being different, and maybe I just won't. So as parents, can we find totally different social spaces where their reputation from school, say, doesn't carry over? Maybe that's, you know, the martial arts class or a summer camp, they can reinvent themselves pretty radically if they want to, and thus be better scientists.
Ned Johnson:I'm a make a quick plug for summer camps, and especially summer camps, where two things, there's no technology for you, so kids don't have the phones and and this is the hard part for parents, where you can't reach them technologically. And I still remember my son, who has been involved with camping from a very young age and is now in leadership there. And blah, blah, blah, he was the youngest possible age that you could be in this camp, and they kind of snuck him, and he was a little bit below the cut off, and they took him in anyway. And so we drop off, and my son is red haired at that time, and blue eyed and just arguably the fairest, palest and Holly murmur was saying is, please put on some sun tan lotion. Just please, please, let's not get skin cancer this summer of cancer, right? And so we drop off the pasty white Matthew and three and a half weeks later pick up sun tan, really, mostly freckled Matt. He'd picked up sun tan, and he dropped three letters from his name and for his, you know, and so in all these spaces. And my wife and I, when, you know, when we were choosing baby names, we always imagined that he would transition to Matt, right? You know, that's a that's a guy's name, right? But we've called Matthew forever, and partly because there was no natural place for us to start calling him mad. It just never it, never it never occurred and never seemed right. But then, bam, all of a sudden, Camp gave him a gate. Camp gave him a brand new identity.
Chris Balme:I love that. It's such a perfect example, yeah, I think that they need those wholly different spaces. And that's part of that other piece about, you know, the ingredients, or the conditions we offer is, how do we give kids genuine variety? Is it's easy to kind of gesture at that notion, or, you know, sure, they've got different classes, different teachers, but
Ned Johnson:it's usually second violin instead of first violin.
Chris Balme:Yeah, exactly. It's kind of in the same vein, and I think they need completely different adults to be around, including, ideally, adults who are not related to you or paid by your family. That opens up the whole category of mentors of this kind of third set of adults that many kids just. Don't have in their lives someone who might be a boss, a mentor, you know, someone in the neighborhood that you're helping out things where there's a bit more objectivity to them. So you know they aren't biased due to relations or because they have a kind of institutional agenda to school me in some way. Right?
Ned Johnson:This isn't doing great. Ned looking for that bonus, right? Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Chris Balme:So that's another just form of variety that I think they really need.
Ned Johnson:Well, I guess the social scientists call it third spaces, right? You know that we have, we have home, and then we have work if we're adults or home, and then we have school if we're children. But those, those third spaces, the third place is where just what you're describing a completely different place, where you can if you choose to have a completely different identity.
Chris Balme:My fantasy is to open a cafe that is for all ages, meaning kids are fully welcome there to have that third space, because so often they're not really welcome in, you know, coffee shops, or maybe parents aren't even comfortable with them wandering out to go find one. I really think they need those spaces where it's still safe there are adults present. It's not, you know, wandering in the woods, but it's, it's a space where they can be with peers, without an adult setting the agenda. If we don't band together as parents, individually, it's too scary. And I think fear is really tied to the isolation that a lot of parents feel that if I'm figuring this out on my own, and my little family bubble and my kid is weird because they're going through puberty, and I don't have lots of comparison points to normalize this. I better just keep them under my my close watch. And of course, that just reduces trust.
Ned Johnson:Unfortunately. Well, you know, in your point about, you know, third spaces, and you know people who are other adults who will have a relationship with the kid, who aren't mom or dad or extended family or someone you pay years ago. Have you ever read hunt, gather parent Michael into clefs book? Bits of it? Yeah, right. Yeah. And so in that she, I'm forgetting the, I'm forgetting the name of the anthropologist, but who coined the term of allo parents, right? So, so all the people in the community, the people in the village, you know that it used to be you and your friends are screwing around, you know, at the inclusive cafe, right? And your parents are there, right? But some adults say, you know, boys, that that's not how, that's not how we behave here, you know, in a cafe. So let's, so, you know, finish up what you're doing. But let's, you know, let's dial it back a little bit. And it used to be, you know, at least in my experience, kind of a collective expectation that other adults would gently and respectfully correct that behavior, but also keep an eye out for wait if this kid in trouble, does this kid need help? And it feels to me now that we're more siloed. And don't you tell me how to prepare my kid. Don't you tell my kid anything, buddy. And so you you bite your tongue, you step back, which, to your point, has the effect of making us feel like we all have to raise our children independently and insert individually, which means, of course, I have to be hyper vigilant because there's no other parent. I can't trust that other adults are looking out for my kid because I'm not looking out for theirs.
Chris Balme:Yeah, exactly. And it's both such a tricky cycle to find ourselves stuck in. And you know, the optimistic part of me says at any point, we can form different agreements with the people that we're at least in physical community with. No we can. We can shift that and
Ned Johnson:love that.
Chris Balme:I think another key piece for adolescents, especially is about time. And I think
Ned Johnson:part of your preaching to the choir, you know, Bring it. Bring it. Bring it to us. Chris hallelujah, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Chris Balme:Sing the same song here. Yeah. I just think, without unhurried time, we don't process the experiences we're having. It's like food piling up in your intestines, but you can't digest it. And full stop, it's unhealthy. It's missing so much goodness from a given day, so they have to have time to process, to reflect.
Ned Johnson:We talk a bit about the default mode network in in our in our book, and shinmin and Yoku forest bathing, and what happens when people have time not to actively be engaged in some activity. You're not doing homework, you're not doing soccer, you're not rushing to homework, you're not rushing you're not rushing to soccer, but just unhurried time. And I think we live in a time and a place where everyone feels as though it's just that's a complete waste of time. I mean, how is that ever going to get you into Harvard, or whatever it happens to be? And the article I'll put in the show notes, you may know, you know the name Mary Helen Emerson, yeah, you know. And so she's just the great stuff. And the paradigm paper that I always refer to is rest is not idleness, the implications of the default mode network. And when you think about. It's when the default mode network engages. We reflect on our past, we project ourselves in the future. It's autobiographical planning. It's developing empathy. But when you'd go back to the idea of being a social scientist and you try this experiment, well, that didn't work. Did I not? You know, Was I too? Got it? Was I not got the enough? You know? What did I do there? And there are a million variables. It could have been the wrong timing. It wasn't the right group I had. Well, who knows, and without time to your point, without time to process that, you just quickly move on to the next experiment. Well, before you iterate,
Chris Balme:let's reflect. That's it. These are deep cultural assumptions, like with sleep, I'd put on that list too, that we think of sleep as lost time. Honestly, how much of what we associate the behavior we associate with adolescents is actually sleep deprivation. Mean, if the scientific consensus is they need nine and a quarter hours a night of sleep, and I think something like two thirds of American adolescents are chronically sleep deprived. How much is that explaining the rise in mental health problems and other
Ned Johnson:percent, you know? And it's not that Jonathan Haidt isn't right about we want to get, you know, have kids have play and lived experiences less than phones, for sure, but 100% I was just talking with the school. I'm going to go give a talk there in a month, and in middle school. And this school, to the credit, this woman is a remarkable educator. She's been doing a longitudinal study for seven years now about all of these factors, but I one of them, one of which I asked about sleep. And she said, 911, hours from middle school, right? 22% of kids got nine to 11 hours. 31% got 820. 5% got seven. 6% got six hours, 10% said they got five hours, and 4% said they got three and a half hours a night.
Chris Balme:Oh, my god, wow. Yeah, that's that's not a good setup, talking about conditions to be good identity scientists, or any kind of scientists.
Ned Johnson:I do most of my talks, and I end up doing talk a little bit about the the brain science, the way that you have and then ask kids, how many of you get this much sleep? And then ask them, if you wanted to, could you get because they never want to push kids to do things that they don't feel that are is possible. And almost all of them raised their hand, I said, would it? Would it help if I offered you an incentive? And they look at me quizzically, and I said, Could you get eight and a half hours of sleep for four nights in a row, for how many of you that would be possible? And most of them raise their hands, and I said, if I offered you 100 bucks, would that change would and nothing galvanized the attention of middle school kids like pulling $100 in cash out of your pocket. And one, I had their attention. And two, I had their buy in.
Chris Balme:It's, there's something very funny that we need to do that, but that that's the reality we're in that, you know, both for good reasons. There are many stimulating things to do, but also, I just think kids are chronically over scheduled, which, which maybe ties into that, that third ingredient I mentioned around J choice. You know when, when do adolescents experience real agency? And you know it's, it can be easy to justify as adults of okay, they can choose how hard they're working in math class, or maybe which club they're joining. But you know, if we take on our own inner adolescent voice, which we all have access to, most of us, at least, you know, I went to traditional public schools. Growing up, I did not have a lot of agency well,
Ned Johnson:and that really gets to your point. I think the kind of fourth ingredient that the kids need to do as social scientists of just how how vitally important friends are. I mean, one of the things that that you know well, but other people may not, is that we know how bodies change in puberty and getting taller and hair in weird places, and blah, blah, blah, but in a in the brain, arguably the most important change is what's called the nucleus accumbens, which is the part of the brain that's all about social approval. And so as you talk about this article, it's like all of a sudden, all of a sudden, a switch got turned on, and you're hyper aware of what other people think, what you think about them, what they think of you, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I think part of the idea was that, you know, 100,000 years ago, we I can't stay living with my family and, you know, make babies with my cousin, because that's not going to be good for our genetic diversity. So I got to go find other people. And so I kind of have to leave the tribe right off and go and find people. And if you don't find your tribe, oh, oh, are you in a pickle, right? And so the the perception of the degree to which adolescent brains pay attention to social approval or disapproval, I mean, it's just, it's radioactive, right?
Chris Balme:I think a great catchphrase, and I didn't invent this, is that it's a time of high perception and low interpretation skills, so all of a sudden that switch flips, and it's close to adult level, torrents of information coming in about the social world, but with no practice handling that information. Conversation. So when they, you know, catastrophize, because what appears to us like a minor social, social drama has unfolded. It's actually a pretty reasonable safe response, because you don't, you haven't been through enough cycles with this social radar on. So something funny is happening. It makes sense to, you know, scramble the fire jets and get ready for anything. You're not sure how bad it's going to be that somebody just gave you a weird look in the hallway. Does that mean the entire school is talking about you? Or that person has a stomach ache? How are you supposed to though? But right, you're picking up this information. So I think that's something where often as adults, when we hear those minor dramas come up, we are so tempted to moralize in response, or like, you know, rub our hands together, teachable moment. Now, child, let me tell you. But I think, really, they just want some validation that it is confusing. Sometimes people have an issue with you for no obvious reason, and certainly when you relate to anything about right, right? Yeah, exactly, you know, welcome to The Club. Adults are complicated too. We we can feel you, we can listen, we can validate without needing to turn it into a moral lesson. I say this as someone I know if my out of seventh grade daughter were here, she would roll her eyes, because I know I make the mistake of turning it into a moral lesson.
Ned Johnson:Aspiring should give you a best to be plus, yeah, exactly 86 well. And one of the fun things about that, when you look at the emotional center of centers of the brain, it's built on the pain centers of the brain. So when you know, if I get kicked out of my friend group or get cut from soccer, don't get a pardon the play or whatever, that social disapproval is spectacularly more painful as an adolescent than it is as an adult. I mean, just just talking to kids about this last week and said and said, Do you guys ever hang out with your friends and you laugh so much that you're just like, No one can breathe, and like, yeah. And they all giggle and raise their hands. I said, You ever seen one of your friends shoot milk out his nose and they all laugh and start punching this one guy, right? And I said, it's been, it's been third. I've never seen an adult shoot milk out of his nose, right, right? I've never seen it doesn't happen, right? I mean, maybe it happens, but maybe they might need to find more interesting people to hang out with. But, but adolescence, they experience everything, everything more intensely, the ups, the downs, the pain, all of it, when your kid comes home and they're just so upset about and we try to tell them, Oh, well, you know, you didn't like Ned that much. Anyway, you'll get it's so invalidating, because they basically saying, Hey, buddy, you really shouldn't be as upset about this as you are. But people feel what they feel
Chris Balme:exactly, and what a beautiful moment for us to model being more real with them. So I think, yeah, that's it's a hardship for us to make as parents, where we're used to them younger, probably we underestimate them. Think they're less mature than they really are, and all that, the more honest conversation you wouldn't have with your five year olds. You know, you wake up and you realize, oh, crap, they're 14. Yeah, yeah. I need to share a bit more about my world, or the fact that, yeah, some days I have a bad day at work or a difficulty with someone. And I can, I can share that without putting the burden on them. I can say, this is how this is part of adult life. Here are some of the tools I might try to use. And, yeah, I'm pissed right now.
Ned Johnson:That's okay. I often think about, you know, we talk about validation in our second book, and to be able to say things like, boy, that's really hard to have your friends ghost you like that. I wish I knew what I could do. Do you want to talk about it? You know, actually, I think the middle school boys have probably nailed validation with a simple freight of dude that sucks, right? I mean, because at the core of it, there's no no explanation need to be given your it sucks, and that's hard.
Chris Balme:I agree. It's why in schools, I'm such a big proponent of advisory spaces when they can genuine, like student peer led spaces when it goes well, you can have that validation. You can say, you know, here's what's happening in my life, and the adult doesn't have to jump in and now instruct you on social and emotional intelligence. Step number one, you know, it's, it's experiential social and emotional learning. When there are peers with you and it's safe enough to speak honestly and respond honestly, that's something I think should be a fundamental ingredient in any middle or high school, in my dream world, that in the cafe I'm putting it out there.
Ned Johnson:Do you have a experience that you do recall from being an adolescent of glorious success or a spectacular failure as a social scientist? Oh, man, both. Yeah, I will. Where do I go
Chris Balme:with this? I mean, I remember the feeling in high school, especially that those those experiments felt so fraught that you know, if you don't get a positive signal early when you're trying anything new. Piece of clothing, whatever, then the temptation is to run into the hills. Yeah, let me hide until the nuclear fallout is settled and I'll re emerge in 2000 years. I say that partly just to bring out the empathy I think all of us. This is the shocking thing to me, actually, is we all get so surprised by what adolescents do, but we were adolescents. It's right, like we've never been through it. I really think it's on us to excavate back to our adolescent selves, so I can, you know, at the right moment. Bring out that story about the time that you know, my mom bought me purple pants. This is a real story. And I was like, okay, whatever. I'll wear them. Got to school, someone made a comment, and I just wanted to dig a hole, jump in and never be seen again.
Ned Johnson:Did you get nickname of Mr. Grapey or eggplant guy or something like that? You know, luckily, not that I knew I would run that. Yeah, and that sense
Chris Balme:that when you're aware, it's almost like you get mind reading powers and all this information that was there you are. You hear it now, and so then it's a logical conclusion to think that everyone can read your mind accurately as well, but they are the same high perceivers, low interpreters that you are. That's the brutal reality of it. Yes, they are picking up your signals, but what they're making of them is not predictable. It's not easy to say.
Ned Johnson:And for folks who don't know, and then this is interesting, adolescents are especially attuned to negative emotions, and to your point, the perception, but not the What's the word for it, not the perception, not interpretation of it. Thank you. They will put people you know, my age, a middle aged guy here right in front of and show me bunch of faces, and then ask, is this person sad, lonely, upset? You know, stomach ache, as you mentioned. You know, what are the what are the subtle shades of negative emotions? And most adults are pretty good at getting those, mostly right, and teenagers are terrible. He's mad. She's mad. He's mad. Everybody's mad.
Chris Balme:I was with my seventh grade daughter the other day walking down the street doing errands, and she was like, why is everyone giving me the side eye? And I was right there next to her. I was like, gosh, I don't think everyone's giving you the side eye, but it's that same if in doubt, choose the most negative interpretation to be safe, that's to be me. That's what.
Ned Johnson:That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And I think about the, you know, kind of coaching moment there. Well, tell me what you what you saw, what tell me what you think that means. Can I tell you what I think what I saw there? Well, how do you know the difference? Just quick reminder for people don't know Chris's books, middle school magic and challenge accepted, 50 things to do in middle school to get that right. To get that right. Yeah. It makes me think about Paul Tough in his book about college, talks about belonging uncertainty and how that makes kids vulnerable in the first year of college, like, do I really belong here? Everyone else is so smart, blah, blah, blah, but also makes them really open to messages of, actually, Chris, you're you really have a head for this stuff. I need you to work harder at this. But really, the way that you look at this is really good, and that it's and I love that term. And I don't know who made it, but it seems to me that that is the core of middle school life of belonging, uncertainty, Where do I belong? Do I belong? And it is such. It's such it's such a fraught time, because for kids, to your point, it feels so scary, and for parents, it feels so scary, you know, if we're alone in this, but it also is such a time of life where kids can find that they belong, not just with their loving parents and their teachers and people who get paid through teenage years, but also to find that they can belong in a gazillion other places. And man, how is it? How exciting is that it's
Chris Balme:such a beautiful thing? And that's yeah, in my first book, talked about that you go through these kind of three developmental challenges during these years, and the first one is to experience belonging durably enough that you internalize the sense I can belong. So when I show up in a new place, I show up in high school, say, I'm of course going to feel nervous, I'll feel threatened for a time, but I've been through a cycle of this, and I get that there are ways and tools and a little bit of time is needed, and then you make it through that cycle, and then same thing in college, or your first job, or you move to a new community. Ideally, we are forever repeating these cycles of trying to belong and then trying to achieve and then trying to authentically be ourselves. But each cycle gets a little easier. The Adventure of middle schoolers is that it's the very first one, because their brain has just made this all possible to experience. So that's why they get the the biggest roller coaster ride of all.
Ned Johnson:Yeah, and you, I think it was in our first talk, you made the point that adolescents are trying to both fit in and stand out, right? But when you're the way that you express. That remind and thank you for reminding me of that, that you first, you first find belongings who fit in, and then you're safe, and then you can find the ways to stand out and be your authentic self.
Chris Balme:Yeah, we Tinker toward it, and sometimes I think as adults, we want to rush them through it. Of course we do, because we want them to not suffer, right? There is an aspect where you have to experience it as objectively as possible. No one can create it for you, but we do. We do create conditions. So, you know, a safer school culture, for example, people are less click ish, there's less bullying. Things again, like advisory make it safer, and advisory itself can be your consistent belonging place. And you internalize that, then you start to feel like I can achieve. How do I win this game? Whatever game is important to you, and then ultimately, who do I want to be in this space? What parts of myself do I want to play with in the social world that I can now see that's that's the adventure they get to go on, and we get to go on with them,
Ned Johnson:because I love it. I love it. My writing partner, Bill Stix, talked about he said, when his kids were approaching that age, one of my friends said to me, the coolest thing about raising teenagers is watching them figure out who they want to be.
Chris Balme:I love it. I'm with you, and I'd add to that that I think the gift back to us for all the trials and tribulations is that if we want to, we get to understand our own adolescent selves, who are still very much alive and well and shaping us every day, and do some work to free up some energy that probably got stuck in whatever way we pinballed through those years and tap back into our own, you know, creativity, laughter, goofiness, those ways that adolescents are so good at making
Ned Johnson:shooting milk out our nose. So that's that's our goal next time, at least
Unknown:one shooting milk out of your nose incident by the time we talk next, I
Ned Johnson:love that. Oh, sorry, sorry this. We should be doing this. We should be doing this on YouTube, not as a podcast. For all you knew, I just did shoot milk out my notice. Well, Chris, thank you for another wonderful article. The way that you keep putting stuff out in the world to help parents and other loving adults help their lovable teens navigate this really challenging but but beautiful and exciting time of life is it's such a gift, and I'm so grateful for the way that you think and help other people think about this, this vital time of life.
Chris Balme:Thanks, Ned, it's always a pleasure to talk with you, and I'm going to work on shooting milk out of my nose before we meet again
Ned Johnson:next year's Olympic milk shooting, nose milk shooting,
Chris Balme:well, it's really better than that feeling laughing so hard that you can't breathe. That is something I've experienced less since adolescence. And yeah, maybe we can, maybe we can change that.
Ned Johnson:We'll have, we'll make a club look for the sign up, folks. Well, my guest has been one the only the teenager at heart, Chris Baum and I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. So a few takeaways from me from this conversation with Chris. Everything they do, the clothes they wear, the music they listen to, the club they join is being ranked, sort of judged by everyone else around them, so it kind of throws them into the role of identity scientist two for us as parents, I really think it is on us to excavate back to our adolescent selves in order to better understand our adolescence today, teens need different social spaces. Can we help them find totally different social spaces where their reputations from school do not carry over? And lastly, something all of us as parents know, adolescents experience everything, everything more intensely, which is a great thing, because it drives them to explore, to create, to think deeply about things that matter to them, including themselves and who they want to be as they fashion their own identities. Hey, folks, over the past 25 years, I've talked to countless parents of high school age students who care deeply about their kids' education and how they deal with stress and the pressure to succeed, it can help parents to work with a team they trust won't just pile on more pressure to achieve better scores and grades. That's why I founded prep matters in 1997 to create a different kind of experience for test preparation and academic tutoring. This podcast and my books with my friend, Bill Stix root reflect our company philosophy and approach to helping students. If you have a high school age student and would like to talk about putting a plan together, please get in touch with us. Visit our website, at prep matters.com, or while your kids may only text you might want to actually. Talk with a person. If so you can reach us at 301-951-0350.